Stop Working On Your Days Off

Days off are as precious as they are rare. It should be surprising, then, that so many of us throw them away so quickly by using them to catch up on yet more work. Cut it out.

There are times when you have to work on your days off. That’s understandable, occasionally. However, America leads the pack on working through the weekend. Part of this is due to part-time or secondary jobs, but, as productivity blog Raptitude explains, part of it is that we’re just plain bad at taking days off:

I don’t think my father took days off. He must have, but I don’t think I ever witnessed it. I cannot picture him getting up and doing anything besides some kind of work. When I would drag myself to the couch at 8am on a Saturday to watch cartoons, he was apparently in the middle of his day, already having built or fixed something.

He would permit himself to read books or watch TV later in the day. But I think the idea of taking a proper day off — where he didn’t build, organize, or otherwise try to advance his lot in life at all — was kind of foreign to him.

Many of us treat our days off in this way. They’re not true “days off” so much as days when our work boss isn’t the one giving us the tasks that need to be done. That’s great and all, but if you spend the bulk of every single day trying to do the things you have to do, and never get a day to enjoy the things you’ve been working so hard for, what’s the point?

What you do with a day off may differ from person to person (in fact I find many of Raptitude’s more specific guidelines would not work for me as they rule out certain things I genuinely enjoy), but it’s important to recognize what you’re working so hard for and actually enjoy it.